The University of Texas at Arlington

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UT Arlington features work of noted architect A. L. Aydelott in exhibition

Posted: February 13, 2008, 8:00 am

The University of Texas at Arlington’s School of Architecture is currently hosting an exhibit of paintings and photographs featuring the work of noted architect A. L. Aydelott. “Architecture: Now and Then” features Aydelott’s paintings of famous cathedrals of the world, as well as photographs of the Pet Building and Plaza in St. Louis, designed by Aydelott and built in 1969 for the Pet Milk Company.

At the time of its completion, the Pet Building was describes by George McCue, Art and Urban Design critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, as “restrained in size, big in ideas, and in form arrestingly expressive in its functions.” The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and is now in the process of being converted into luxury apartments.

Although a celebrated architect, Aydelott has focused on art for the better part of the last thirty years. His watercolors of such noted Gothic cathedrals as those found in Amiens, Chartres, Segovia, and Florence celebrate what Aydelott calls “the scope and integrated arts of the Gothic Cathedrals.”

A. L. Aydelott is an emeritus fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and has served as visiting design critic and architect-in-residence at Yale University, the Carnegie Institute of Technology and Auburn University. After serving in World War II, Aydelott founded his own design firm in Memphis, where he acquired a reputation as the foremost figure of Memphis Modernism. He is now retired and lives in California.

The exhibition is sponsored by Christian Brothers University in Memphis, a campus designed in part by Aydelott. In addition to its stay at UT Arlington, the exhibition will travel to the University of Tennessee, the University of Arkansas, Auburn University in Alabama, Mississippi State University, Tulane University in New Orleans and Washington University in St. Louis.

“Architecture: Now and Then” will be on display at the UT Arlington School of Architecture Gallery in Room 206 through the end of February. It is free and open to the public.